Chronic. When Alfred Krupp inherited in 1826 from the company founded by his father, he was only fourteen years old, and his small steel factory in Essen, north Rhine will not be saved by the explosive growth of the steel industry in the Nineteenth century : the railroad, the ships, the weapons. His science in this field has brought victory for the prussian army to face the French in 1872, the crowning ” kanonenkönig “, the king of the canon. At this date, it enacts a “regulation-general” for its nearly 20,000 employees, and their offers to the passage of the social security, retirement, vacation, in exchange for their loyalty absolute. Krupp then had its bakeries, stores, housing, retirement homes and care, a State in the German empire.
There is no longer a question of bakeries and hospitals in today’s ThyssenKrupp, are still in part the property of the heirs of Alfred. The company has announced September 27 its split into two separate entities, one side of the materials, the armaments and the iron and steel industry, and other industrial equipment : elevators, automotive parts, and industrial machines. A dismantling fought by the previous management landed this summer. And a victory for investor activists, the Swedish fund Cevian and american Eliott that stick to the basques of the patrons of the company for nearly five years. A heart-breaking last great steelworks of German if symbolic of the hours of the most glorious and darkest in German history of the last two centuries, and who had already had to merge its iron and steel industry with that of the Indian Tata.
The luxury of the diversification, excessive
For investors, the case is heard, the conglomerates are of a different age. Mired in the bureaucracy necessary for the supervision of their multiple activities, they display poor performance. According to the bank Goldman Sachs, over the past five years, their education, stock…
